Claim: A video circulating on social media shows sheep and cattle lying dead in muddy water following heavy rain and flooding in Quetta, Balochistan in July 2022.
Fact: The video is, in fact, from 2020 and shows the aftermath of deadly floods in northern Saudi Arabia.
On 5 July 2022, a video was shared on Facebook with the Urdu caption:
کوئٹہ کے مختلف علاقوں میں سیلابی ریلے داخل ہونے سے شہریوں کا جانی اور مالی نقصان
کوئٹہ میں تیز بارشوں اور سیلابی ریلے نے مویشی منڈی کو بھی نقصان پہنچایا
کوئٹہ کی منڈی میں سیلابی ریلا داخل ہونے سے کئی جانور پانی میں ڈوبنے کی وجہ سے مار گئے، بے پاریوں کو لاکھوں کا نقصان
Translated into English the caption reads: “Due to flood relay entering different areas of Quetta, the lives and financial loss of citizens. The heavy rains and floods in Quetta also damaged the livestock market. Many animals were killed due to drowning due to flooding in the market of Quetta, loss of millions to the traders.”
Fact or Fiction?
The 21-second video features sheep and cattle lying dead in muddy water. The video began circulating online in July 2022, after Pakistan was battered by deadly monsoon rains and floods which killed around 60 people and damaged close to 700 mud and brick-walled houses in Quetta and other areas of the province, as reported by Al-Jazeera.
Soch Fact Check conducted a Reverse Image Search on Google that turned up similar videos shared on Youtube. A keyword search turned up a news report published on website Vaaju.com on November 13, 2020. The title of the report reads, “Hundreds of sheep died in Arar after being flooded by floodwaters”. According to the article, currents swept through the northern border town of Arar and caused hundreds of sheep to die.
Arar Valley is located near Arar, the capital of Saudi Arabia’s Northern Borders province.
A Youtube video of the incident with an Arabic title is also linked in the article.
Soch Fact Check did a keyword search using the Arabic title and found the same video published by weather portal Arabia Weather on November 12, 2020.
On November 12, 2020, Saudi Arabia’s Al-Marsd Newspaper published screenshots of the video in its report about 1,000 sheep that died in the Arar Valley after torrential rain.
Different shots from the footage were also used in November 2020 reports about sheep killed by flooding in Arar by Kuwait News, a newspaper owned by Kuwait-based Q8News, an online media outlet Iraq News, and a Saudi online website Akhbaar 24.
The video was shared with misleading claims here, here, and here on Facebook and here, here, and here on YouTube.
Conclusion: A viral video that allegedly depicts the aftermath of heavy rain in Pakistan in July 2022 is actually from 2020 and shows livestock lying dead in muddy water flowing in northern Saudi Arabia.